Own your on-line presence

I have always agreed that you should own and control your on-line presence, assuming you care about such things. So while there is no issue with using Facebook, Google+ or Twitter, you are giving up a significant amount of control and ownership if you use those sites as your only presence.

I have (sparsely) maintained a blog since 2001, and I just completed an update to it that includes moving it to my own domain name (kligerman.ca), and rejigging it to add links to all the other places I am active on-line. These changes make it feel much more like a real home for me on the web, and I think it will encourage me to share my thoughts more often. I also added a feed of the posts by others that I think are worth reading–oddly, I have been sharing such posts for years within Google Reader, but for some reason have never shared them elsewhere. I chose a theme with lots of columns, where the column with my posts is no larger than the others, because I think this accurately represents the importance (to me) of content from Twitter and from others, relative to my own. Sharing is just as important as producing.

Let me know what you think of the new setup. I look forward to seeing how it continues to evolve. It feels good to have a single place that aggregates me.